Coates helps UCI with inquiry team

The International Cycling Union has turned to Australia's John Coates for help choosing a team to investigate the governing body's links to the Lance Armstrong doping case.

Coates, the president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport board, has suggested names for a three-member inquiry panel that will soon begin work.

"We would like to thank John Coates for his recommendations, which we will follow to the letter," UCI president Pat McQuaid said in a statement on Wednesday.

The commission will include a "respected senior lawyer", a forensic accountant and an experienced sports administrator all "independent of cycling", the embattled governing body said.

The UCI said it has already contacted lawyers and sports officials recommended by Coates, who was also a member of the International Olympic Committee executive board.

The inquiry is seen as a key stage in restoring the UCI's damaged credibility following the Armstrong affair. A report and recommendations are due by June 1.

On the panel's agenda will be accusations that cycling's leaders covered up suspicious doping tests given by Armstrong during his 1999-2005 run of Tour de France victories, and unethically accepted donations totalling $125,000 from him.

The longstanding claims were revisited in the US Anti-Doping Agency's devastating report last month, which detailed massive doping by Armstrong's teams, but were not directly addressed in a 1000-page dossier of evidence.

"The purpose of this independent commission is to look into the findings of the USADA report and ultimately to make conclusions and recommendations that will enable the UCI to restore confidence in the sport of cycling and in the UCI as its governing body," said McQuaid, who was elected its president weeks after Armstrong's record seventh victory.

Hein Verbruggen, McQuaid's predecessor who remains honorary president, has been the target of severe criticism that a culture of doping allowed Armstrong's teams to dominate the sport's greatest event by cheating.

The UCI endorsed USADA's findings last month and stripped Armstrong of all of his race results since August 1998, including the seven Tour titles, and banned him for life.

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